


Delight in Friends

by Velerian



Series: Kinkmeme prompts [9]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Bromance, F/M, Fanfic as Therapy, Gen, Harry Potter - Freeform, I just love Molly okay?, Is also here, M/M, Molly the fanfic writer, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, drunken conversations, gratuitous smut writing, just a little cracky
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-10
Updated: 2013-03-12
Packaged: 2017-11-28 21:33:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/679108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Velerian/pseuds/Velerian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based off of this prompt:</p><p>After John and Sherlock come clean as a couple, John starts to notice Molly looking at him. At odd moments, when he least expects it, and she doesn't look angry or hurt or upset.</p><p>She looks considering and frankly John doesn't want to know what she may be considering.</p><p>Until one day, in the deserted hospital cafe, she comes up to him with her laptop held like a shield in front of her chest and asks:</p><p>"Will you beta my porn, please?"</p><p>John finds out what slash is, Molly's porn gets spectacularly hot and accurate and Sherlock does wonder where John's getting all these new, kinky ideas from but isn't complaining. </p><p>Mycroft says 'Howelo' so I think he's laughing</p><p>http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/9100.html?thread=42881164#t42881164</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Meeting

John had thought Molly would be heart broken, crest fallen... or some other flowery term for completely crushed when Sherlock announced that he did indeed “need my John” because everyone “is too much of a dunderhead to ask the proper questions,” then he pulled John into a supply cupboard and noisily snogged him until the answer came to him. He came flying out of the cupboard like a whirling dervish, spouting off deductions while John, red faced and mildly mortified, shuffled out of that ignoble hiding place.  
Instead she looked...thoughtful.

  
Really he had expected some cry of despair, but maybe her experience with a similar mad genius had killed her attraction to ethereal geniuses with complexes to match their massive egos. Well, when he saw that there would be no childish fretting and crying from the already rattled and tired looking Molly, he put it out of his mind as easily as she put his name out of hers.

  
But not for long, it seemed. The next time he saw her, collecting samples of stomach acid pH's from what felt like all the corpses in St. Bart's morgue, a blush dotted her cheeks and she gave a quick “Hi, John!” before disappearing into her office. He put it to a one off thing and went back to assuring the startled intern he had corralled into helping him that yes this was legal and yes it was For Science. He didn't look convinced, but John just gave him the classic “What can you do?” shrug and they went on with the nasty business.

  
When, months after the Pool incident and weeks after getting caught in a supply cupboard like a bunch a sixth formers, John was offered a job at Bart's, he joyfully accepted.

Moriarty had gone underground, true, but Sherlock had his scent and was following it with the tenacity of a bloodhound. Right there from Baker Street, Sherlock could pinpoint the master mind’s exact location with a couple of IP addresses and a bic brio. It was brilliant to watch him go at it, and the victory sex when Mycroft used his long reaching influence. Though Sherlock loathed to admit it, he did rely on his brother more often than not to whittle down Moriarty's forces in a suitably subtle fashion. The sex was brilliant, too. More than brilliant, it was utterly imaginative, incandescent, a great ball of fire...and he was off daydreaming again. In any case, instead of making his way in the locum clinic, he had a good, well paying job assisting surgeries at St. Bart's.

  
What he hadn't realized when he took the job, was that Molly spent nearly all of her time at St. Bart's. He would catch her watching him late at night after a successful surgery. His first stop was always the cafeteria after a job well done, to eat something vaguely edible and catch up with his ever broadening collection of mates in the hospital. She was either alone nursing a coffee or chatting with the nurses on break.

   
He thanked god that it wasn't the same longing look she gave Sherlock every time he walked into her morgue. No, it was the same, thoughtful, contemplative look she gave him after his relationship with Sherlock became public knowledge. Not that he would have outed them in such a...dramatic fashion, but Sherlock was always the more melodramatic one of the two.

  
What did she want? He would wonder before being pulled into conversation with the pretty slip of a girl working in radiology or the terrified surgeon intern convinced he or she had ruined the operation and left a scalpel in the patient. It seems that pulling one scalpel out of one patient before he was sewn up gave him a reputation as God of All Surgeon Techs. They all insisted that he ask to be promoted, that he take the place of one of the more odious surgeons on staff. He baulked, worried about the tremor in his hand resurfacing, even if it hadn't since first meeting Sherlock, even at his most mind numbingly bored at the clinic.

 


	2. The Proposal

It took three months of Molly popping up when he was in hospital, nervously asking how he was when he was dragged into the morgue by Sherlock, and watching him intensely when they happened to share a break before she finally asked him a question not related to the weather or general well-being.  
  
“Could I talk to you?” she asked, sliding across from him in the cafeteria, bright pink laptop (complete with unicorn sticker and her name stencilled in violet on the back of the monitor) held in front of her like a shield. It was nearly four in the morning, and everyone was either sleeping or working, John didn't know. All he noticed was that it was unusually barren down there, even given the hour. That was probably why Molly had come over in the first place. He plastered on a tired but friendly smile, and motioned her to continue. He had wondered about her lately. He hoped, whatever it was, that it wasn't something about 'Jim from IT.' He would need another cup of tea before he tackled that.  
  
“Go ahead,” he prompted when she started playing with her hair.  
  
“Wouldyoubetamyfanfic?” The words came out in a tumble, and he shook his head.  
  
“Sorry?” She bit her lip and seemed torn between staring at her white knuckled grip on the closed laptop and the window across the room.  
  
“I-well, you see...” he let the silence stretch, figuring she would tell him eventually. Molly wasn't the kind to push for information, he knew that. She would clam up, trip up her words, even rush out of the room if you put too much pressure on her, but she did graduate from medical school in record time and was the director of the mortuary complex at St. Bart's. Sherlock just intimidated her like nothing else, which meant that John was treated the same way by proxy. “I, I do some writing. On the internet. It's stupid really, but since Moriarty...it's either bury myself in work or take up a hobby. So I chose fan fiction!” She pulled herself up and looked him in the eye, daring him to mock her.

  
“Fan fiction?” he asked, agreeably. “That's writing about film characters, right?”  
  
“Well, it's more than that, but...Yeah let’s go with that. I heard you're not really tech savvy, no offence,” she gave him a look bordering on pleading. “I've been trying to find someone for ages that can beta my slash, but no one I know has the right equipment or experience...”  
“I'm afraid you'll have to run that by me again, Molly. I mean, you're right. I still type with two fingers, so it you'd give me a step by step, I'd-”  
  
“Sorry! I just, get excited about it, I guess. I really like doing it, but the lemons can be really difficult even with other reference material. I was hoping someone with hands on experience could...I dunno steer me in the right direction?” she gave him a pleading look. “Say you'll do it for me? Just read over one thing, and answer a few questions, I promise.” He really had no idea what she was talking about. Lemons? Slash? But it looked like it would make her happy, and if all it took to make her happy was to read some short she wanted to post on the internet...Well, who was he to deny her?  
  
“Sure, Molly. Send it to me whenever, and I'll look it over.” She lit up like a Christmas tree.  
  
“Thank you, John! I'll email you the draft, if you want. Or I could give you a hard copy?” she was very nearly bouncing in her seat. “I can show it to you right now if you’re not busy,” she held out the pink monstrosity as if it were some great sacrifice to the Gods of Good Fiction. He waved his hand a bit frantically, not keen on staying at Bart's for longer than necessary.  
  
“I'll take a paper copy, I think. Not too good with technology, remember?”  
  
“Yeah, I've read your blog,” she chuckled, then froze. “Not-not that it's bad mind, but...well. Really, it could use a bit of sprucing up, generally,” she wilted a bit.  
  
“Maybe you could give me a bit of blog tutoring in exchange?” he asked magnanimously. She brightened again.  
  
“I would love to!”  
  
He smiled again and begged off staying for another cuppa, explaining that Sherlock was expecting him to help with a case in a few hours. This 'case' may be nothing more than lazing on the couch all day watching telly, but John did like to keep his promises. And he would keep his with Molly as well.  
  
After all, what harm would come of a bit of reading and critique?


	3. Eyes

Maybe a bit of harm to his retinas, he mused the next day. The scene she had wanted 'betaing on' was near the end and very...unrealistic.  
  
 _Harry's cock, engorged with blood, left him breathless. He swiftly went down on Harry, moaning as the glorious penis hit the back of his throat-  
_  
Wow. John was a little flabbergasted that sweet little Molly Hooper could be so, well, explicit. At least he was at work, and Sherlock wasn't about to peer over his shoulder and criticise his choice in pornography. He could nearly hear that baritone, “Really John. That is most definitely not physically possible.”  
  
 _Use both names,_ he wrote for a start. _Nobody likes things engorged with blood unless there's knife-play involved, and oral sex is not that perfunctory._  
  
Really, after shaking off the strangeness involved in actually editing porn instead of just reading it for a wank, John thought he was getting quite good at this. It seemed that Molly would often just substitute the sub with a woman and forget she was dealing with different physiologies or get too bogged down in anatomical details to sound realistic. This juxtaposition left John such gems as:  
  
 _Harry plunged in without further preparation. It was amazing, he thought, feeling Harry's cock fill him up. He was so sensitive; a swipe of the hand on his button would be enough to set him off.  
_  
And:  
  
 _His foreskin was gently pressed back, exposing the angry red head of his penis, the shaft, and the major veins of the penis, gently pulsing with blood as it passed through the large artery deep inside the penis and sending oxygen depleted blood back into the heart.  
_  
He wrote beside that one, ‘ _Your medical degree is getting in the way of your skills as a writer_.’ And it all seemed so...sudden and heartless, as if the only reason these people were getting together is because it was foretold, and Molly's expressions and words seemed a little hollow. Her characters just weren't alive.  
  
So he wrote down his opinions between surgeries and pre-op and post op check-ups and managed to finish the six pages of unfeeling, awkward sex by the end of his shift. John wondered how she would react when he took the lift down to the morgue. Of course, instead of slipping it into her office while she was out, he found her elbow deep in an amazingly obese man, face shield splattered with flecks blood and bile.  
  
“Oh, John!” She looked up from her work with pleased surprise. “Just a second,” and turned back to her corpse, gently prizing something from the abdomen and placing it gently onto a dish. “Appendicitis,” she explained. “Gary, the intern who follows you about when he's not down here, he was sure the cause of death was an irregularity in endocrine system, but I thought- Oh! You finished?” She smiled brightly, taking off her shield and pulling off her gloves. “What did you think?”  
  
“Um.” How would he explain without hurting her feelings? “The grammar and spelling are fantastic,” he tried, smiling as she went through it, page by page.  
  
“There's...quite a bit of ink on this page,” she said finally, pointing to the first page of the protracted, painful sex scene. “Didn't you like it?”

“No, no, I liked it. I just- Didn't you want advice?” He licked his lips, hoping to diffuse the situation. “And the bit on page thirty six? With the 'wheelbarrow' position and the pineapple? That was really imaginative! I have half a mind to try it with Sherlock, even.” She smiled a little, turning to the page in question.  
  
“I really enjoyed writing that bit, I really just thought it up as I went,” she murmured.  
  
“That's good. Don't let yourself get hung up with the details and just...let the words flow.” God but did he sound like a shit motivational speaker at some workshop nursing the self-esteem of crap authors. He tried again “Have you tried writing drunk?”  
  
“No,” she said slowly. “Is that supposed to help?” She was incredulous, but he had a vague idea brewing in his head. He nodded with a bland, trustworthy smile.  
  
“Then edit sober,” he intoned wisely.  
  
“Um,” she fiddled with her hair as if suddenly ashamed. “I'll-I'll try that sometime. Thanks, eh- John.” Molly seemed to vanish, she fled so quickly, and John decided he must have crossed some line he hadn't realised existed.  
  
He understood why the next night.

 


	4. Drink

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Molly Takes John's Advice

“Why did he LEAVE, JOHN?!” someone wailed into his ear at 4 in the morning. “WHY? WHY DOES HE HAVE TO DIE?!” John had thought, for a moment, it was Molly, bemoaning her romantic entanglements with a criminal mastermind while blindingly drunk. “He was SO swee-OH it DOESN'T. MAKE. SENSE, JOHN. I don't UNDERSTAND! He was such a good elf.”  
  
“What the bloody hell?” he groaned incredulously. “How is Moriarty a 'good elf,' Molly?”  
  
“Not JIM, John. Dobby.” She almost sounded sober. “Poor, POOR DOBBY!” and then slid right back into blindingly drunk ranting.  
  
“Molly, what brought this on?” She sniffed as Sherlock harrumphed beside him, stealing the covers in retaliation.  
  
“Well, you thought my Dresden Files was bugger all awful, so I thought I'd try Harry Potter, and remember why I hate those films as a-a...film buff. So I watched the Philosopher's Stone with a bottle of wine because you told me to write drunk, and I thought I could write book cannon while watching film cannon, and I cried into Toby's tail when Richard Harris told Danny Radcliffie about death being the next great adventure. I SOBBED, John. SOBBED. How could you do this to me?” She paused to blow her nose.  
  
“I finished the wine after Christopher Columbus left, and the only thing in my cabinet was this apple liqueur I bought for Jim.” Her voice dropped down to a giggling whisper-yell rather than a drunken screech. “He liked his appletinis, John, appletinis. Who could honestly love a man that likes appltinis that much, John? It makes no sense! I'm so glad I dumped him before I found out he was a Napoleon of Crime, John. Really-”  
  
Sherlock scoffed into the pillow, “She was head over heels for him, John. Her drunken banter is all denial, and enjoying apple liqueur in any form is nothing to be ashamed of coming from a male in a, dare I say it, loving relationship.” John was torn between frowning at his flatmate's blunt dismissal of Molly's drunken ramblings, laughing at his defence to appletini drinkers everywhere, and beaming incandescently at the word 'loving,' regardless of the derision attached. He settled with ruffling his hair and leaning in for a quick peck, which deepened unexpectedly into a full out snog.  
  
When he finally returned to the phone lying limp and lifeless on the duvet, it seemed that Molly was finally winding down to the point of her story. “-I was watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I again, and I just got to the end, John. Dobby was my favourite, John. He was so innocent and kindly and sometimes I felt a kinship, John. We were brothers in arms, John. His speech touched me, John. John, it touched me like nothing in my life, John. Not even my father's funeral compares, but that's probably because I performed his autopsy, but JOHN IT TOUCHED MY FROZEN HEART,” she wailed with a fresh batch of tears and soul rending sobs. “I HAD to call, John. I simply HAD to.”  
  
“I-I understand, Molly, but you need to go to bed now. When you wake up, you can tell me more, okay?” She mumbled something incomprehensible and hung up the phone, but John was so elated she hadn't noticed he had ignored her for at least half of her rant; he didn't make much of it. The next morning, there was a massive document in his email from one molly_Wobbles30@gmail.com. Oh boy.


End file.
